Matte Painting – Destroyed Paris

10 days ago, or so, I wrote 7 posts. Today I’m just doing 2. Way easier.

The school tasked me with creating a matte painting. What the heck is a matte painting? Well, it’s the ultra-high def cousin of concept art. And it’s actually pretty amazing. (Do yourself a favor and googled ‘digital matte painting’)

Matte painting serves to fill an environment in film or movies. Like if a character is standing in front of a destroyed town, you can assume the prop makers didn’t actually destroy a town. A matte painter just painted one in the background.

I started with a picture of Paris because I really like that place (I eloped there with my wife!)

Then I set about destroying it! I started blending other pictures on top and painting in areas and changing the lighting and junk. I wanted to create a world that was destroyed by a fungus or an insect or something.

These are the images I used to create the scene.

And THIS is the final imageHow did I do? The ‘eggs’ (or whatever) are actually just moldy blackberries.

What to compare it to the original? Here yah go!And of course… the animated process.Michael